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Saturday, December 28, 2013

Is the Mac Pro processor user replaceable?
Reviews of the new Mac Pro's are starting to appear, and already it's a bit confusing whether the CPU can be replaced. MacWorld's review suggests that the GPU's are user replaceable, but doesn't mention the CPU (making you think that's it's not.) The article is well worth reading as it explains why the current iMac can actually be faster than a Mac Pro for some tasks:

When it comes to apps and tasks that can take advantage of multiple processor cores, GHz matters, but multi-core matters just as much—or more. For apps and tasks that don’t benefit from multiple cores, the processor’s clock speed becomes more important.

Meanwhile Mac Rumors has an article that says that the CPU is removeable, though whether the user can actually switch it for another processor is unknown:

Using a removable socketed processor rather than the soldered processors found in most of Apple's Macs means that users may be able to upgrade their machines in the future as their needs change and/or chip prices decline.

The most exciting one for me is the 2K centre crop mode. This is a feature that has been seen in other video cameras before but is new to the F5 and F55. What it allows you to do is just record the central part of the camera’s sensor when shooting 2K in XAVC HD and HD in MPEG HD or SR codecs.

I’ve personally run into a problem updating to the current Premiere Pro v7.2.1 on Mac because of an error. Here’s how to get around it.The Creative Cloud updated to 62% before the error popped up, telling me that I had to close the following application: dynamiclinkmanager.

One of the most common compression questions I get is how to compress files for a DVD. I’ve covered this a lot in my video training, but haven’t written about this for several years. This article explains what you need to know using both Compressor 4.1 and Compressor 4.0.

Since editing became an Oscar category in 1934, only nine films have won best picture without at least a nomination for editing; the last was 1980’s “Ordinary People.” Of the 61 films that have won best picture Oscars since 1952, 32 have won the editing statuette as well.

"There is no actual community interaction with movies nowadays, you just plop down on the couch and turn on Netflix," said Tyler Baptist, the co-founder of Videonomicon, Saskatoon's newest video-rental store that exclusively rents out hard-to-find movies on VHS.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

One thing I did notice is there didn’t seem to be as much dynamic range as some other cameras or even the original BMCC. If you have a look at the sky at 01.08 and the shot in the garage at 01.37 of Solorio’s video you can see examples of what i’m talking about. There is also some noise visible in shadow areas too.

To me the image looks a bit less digital than some other cameras, and I think part of that is due to the CCD sensor. The texture is different from CMOS sensors, and certainly at lower ISOs this can be a great look if the project you’re working on benefits from it. I have always been partial to CCDs and the way they produce an image, so I’m probably a little biased.

While the whole change in Project / timeline management is my favorite change it’s the addition of Libraries that is probably most significant. This follows what has happened in Aperture and iMovie. All media Events, timelines and keyword collections now live in a Library.

The original Z-finder is a poor fit on the Pocket Cinema Camera because of its larger 3.5 inch screen. The new Z-finder covers it perfectly and yet remains lightweight enough to be attached with an adhesive frame. Also new is an add-on diopter system with 4 diopters, 0, +1, +2, and +3. This allows users to correct for their vision without adding weight and bulk.

In this video, I give an in-depth tutorial on how to build the custom motorized slider that I use. If you want to see it in action, check out my video A Portrait of Macerata, below. All of the sliding shots and well as the two crane shots were taken using this slider.

Now this codec is not as good as the C300′s, but here is where it gets interesting, you can add the Atomos Ninja 2 into the mix, which records true 25p at ProRes 4:2:2 10bit, and get the same, if not better, image than the C300′s internal recordings. That does not mean the C100 is a better camera than the C300, it just means you have an option if you need to record something with more colour space than what is offered internally on the C100.

If you are looking on how to record surround sound – Specifically, the actors voices for a film, movie, or show of some sort, I have good news.Surround sound, specifically 5.1 audio is NOT actually recorded in the field.“Believe it or not, the human voice does not speak in 5.1, nor stereo either.”

I put the .AVI file (yes .avi) onto a 720p 25p timeline and upscaled it by 300%..my god it looked AWFUL!! Premiere CC just sort of accepted the odd framerate no problem and with this Super 8mm like frame rate I had to see if my go to plugin FILMCONVERT with a Super 8mm film stock could reduce the awfulness…and guess what? It did as you can see below!

The RX10, on the other hand, samples the entire sensor's raw data, then downscales to HD resolution using the powerful Bionz X processor. It works great. We found the RX10's video detail to be almost at the level of the Canon 5D Mark III, the camera most pro DSLR shooters spring for. You won't get the creamy ultra-shallow depth-of-field, or quite the same low-light performance as the 5D Mark III, but the difference isn't major.

Today we celebrate FCPX-mas, thats right, our Holiday episode landed on the big Final Cut Pro 10.1 and Mac Pro release and we celebrate with Mark Spencer and Steve Martin from RippleTraining.com . We discuss everything you need to know about the update, plus how to correctly migrate to the new version.

Initial editing was butter smooth. I experienced no delay editing raw r3d files, where as before working on the laptop I would experience dropped frames fairly often. It was only when I started stabilizing clips and adding colour correction when I noticed delays in performance. But that’s fairly understandable.

Even the casual user that simply wants to make their iPad easier to handle and operate on a day-to-day basic around the home or office will find this quite useful. It's brilliant in design and serves it's function as promised. And at around $60, it's a no-brainer to give your iPad/iPad Mini a little control and flexibility.

Despite being a plastic bodied lens, it's robust and solidly built, but to my mind, could be improved in a few areas. The red dot for aligning the lens with my camera mount is on the metal part of the lens hidden by the lens mount - I could do with it at the side of the lens.

In Mbps equivalence the XQD cards are up and around near 1440Mbps and 1340Mbps for the 180MB/s and 168Mb/s cards respectively and the cameras don’t come anywhere close to the max rates of the cards. Where you will find the benefit of the speed is later in transfer rate speeds when off loading your footage to your computer or storage network.

The lab, which employed 39 people, was devoted to processing 65mm negatives and striking 70mm prints for Imax and other large-format theaters. ”It’s clear the market has dropped, as you can imagine,” said Claude Gagnon, president of Technicolor Creative Services.

In a report issued Friday, it recommended that painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like deserve a royalty when their work is resold at a profit.

Honestly i kind of went into this thinking i probably wouldn't like this camera as much as the other two, but right now i like it more! The images are really nice, really really nice. This time the BMDFilm coming from the camera has a lot more contrast and saturation than the previous two, so you don't have to do anywhere near as much to grade it (but yes i already have a LUT i've made/been using with it to speed things up even more).

A video guide to workflow using the Sony FS700 and the Convergent Design Odyssey 7Q shooting 2K Raw and 2K Raw HFR material. I show you how to deal with Cinema DNG files recorded on the Odyssey in Davinci Resolve as well as how to use the Convergent Design Clip merger to bring Raided files together when shooting HFR.